Nadal has got the pressure on him now. He has had a unimpressive start to the season (for a world number 2). Now he has the points to defend. Nadal starts the defence of Dubai tommorow and then he has all his clay court points to defend, not to mention a Wimbledon final. Nadal has a lot to lose between now and the end of Wimbledon. How will he fare?

Yup. Realistically, his crunch time starts at Montecarlo. Between MC and Wimby, he has bucket load of points to defend. (3,055 points to defend). And from now till MC, he has 530 more to defend as well. The next few months are going to set a tone for him and Federer as well. Interesting times ahead !!

i think this may be one of the more interesting stories of the year. Nadal, while he did pick up a bunch of points at the AO, still didn't look that impressive playing against an 'on-fire' Gonzales, and he's been complaining about one injury or another since the year end. Even though i'm not a huge fan, i do hope that he's in top shape, both physically and mentally, leading up to the FO. He's such a superb claycourter that it would really suck to see him losing to guys he would have thrashed last year. time will tell!

As a great fan of Nadal I am sitting on the fence. Really hope he has made some changes to his game - in particular his serve - which could get him that extra point under pressure. It is so difficult to predict how far he can go on hard courts - would be really great to see him go beyond the quarter final stage. Just really hoping he will be in the last days of Wimbledon finals

I think hard court is the hardest surface for him because most players grew up on hard court while Nadal grew up on clay. Altering his game to be a hard court player is a big step. His serve style, forehand, and positioning all suit clay perfectly but not hard courts. He has done better on hard courts than most clay court specialist though. I consider grass an equal ground as no one has a lot of experience so maybe that is why Nadal does better on grass than hard courts as of late.

Your loser monkeyboy will be nowhere close to the Wimbledon final this year. He wont play a bunch of nobodies like he did last year with his joke draw. He will be lucky to get past the 4th round this year.

I reckon Rafa will hit the claycourt season running. However I do think it'll be a trend ie: does well at CC evetns but then scraps by at others with a fe good perfomances here and there. This coming from a Fan btw

Your loser monkeyboy will be nowhere close to the Wimbledon final this year. He wont play a bunch of nobodies like he did last year with his joke draw. He will be lucky to get past the 4th round this year.

I don't agree with your obviously well thought out thesis. you my friend are a a genius, wow!